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When at last Josephine found her own room she discovered
her maid Jeanne, waiting for her, fright still in
her face.

“Madame!” exclaimed Jeanne, “it
is terrible! What horrors there are in this
place. What has been done—­is it true
that Monsieur has lost both his legs? But one,
perhaps? For the man with one leg, it is to
be said that he is more docile, which is to be desired.
But both legs—­”

“It is not true, Jeanne. There has been
surgery, but perhaps Mr. Dunwody will not even be
a cripple. He may get well—­it is still
doubtful.”

“How then was it possible, Madame, for you to
endure such sights? But is it not true, how the
Bon Dieu punishes the wicked? For myself,
I was in terror—­even though I was some distance
away; and although that young gentleman, Monsieur
Hector, was so good as to hold my hand.”

CHAPTER XXI

THE PAYMENT

Doctor Jamieson did not at once return to his other
duties. He knew that in this case care and skill
would for a time continue in demand. Little
sleep was accorded him during his first night.
Ammonia—­whisky—­what he had, he
used to keep his patient alive; but morning came,
and Dunwody still was living. Morphine now seemed
proper to the backwoods physician; after this had done
its work, so that his patient slept, he left the room
and wandered discontentedly about in the great house,
too tired to wake, too strained to sleep.

“Old—­old—­it’s an
old, tumble-down ruin, that’s what it is,”
he grumbled. “Everything in sixes and
sevens—­a man like that—­and an
ending like this to it all.”

He had called several times before he could get any
attendance from the shiftless blacks. These,
quick to catch any slackening in the reins of the
governing power which controlled their lives, dropped
back into unreadiness and pretense more and more each
hour.

“What it needs here is a woman,” grumbled
Jamieson to himself. “All the time, for
that matter. But this one’s got to stay
now, I don’t care who she is. There must
be some one here to run things for a month or two.
Besides, she’s got his life in her two hands,
some way. If she left now, might as well shoot
him at once. Oh, hell! when I die, I want to
go to a womanless world. No I don’t, either!”

His decision he at last announced to Josephine herself
when finally the latter appeared to make inquiry regarding
the sick master of Tallwoods.

“My dear girl,” said he, “I am a
blunt man, not a very good doctor maybe, and perhaps
not much of a gentleman, I don’t know—­never
stopped to ask myself about it. But now, anyhow,
I don’t know how you happened to be here, or
who you are, or when you are going away, and I’m
not going to ask you about any of those things.
What I want to say is this: Mr. Dunwody is going
to be a very sick man. He hasn’t got any
sort of proper care here, there’s no one to run
this place, and I can’t stay here all the time
myself. Even if I did stay, all I could do would
be to give him a dose of quinine or calomel once in
a while, and that isn’t what he needs.
He needs some one to be around and watch after things—­this
whole place is sick, as much as the owner of it.
I reckon you’ve got to help me, my dear.”